


For The Love Of Strandor (2!)

by naturesinmyeye



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: #Horses, #short and sweet, #strandor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 16:03:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8807263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naturesinmyeye/pseuds/naturesinmyeye
Summary: Attempting to clean up the old laptop, I came across this one that I wrote for devilsbastion, on her birthday.  You may have seen this one on Tumblr over the summer and, until now, that was the only place it was available. But I don't want it to end up getting lost in a purge or when this laptop kicks the bucket, so here you are. More Strandor goodness. Sandor. Horse. Feels. What else do you need?A hopeful little one shot while we wait on TWOW.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [devilsbastion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilsbastion/gifts).



It was the horse that saved him.

 

Not literally, of course. That was obviously impossible, given the injuries Sandor had sustained.  Hooves and empty saddlebags didn’t equate to healing hands and Maester’s tinctures. It was a monk who saved Sandor’s physical self, but without the horse, all the holy man’s efforts might have been for naught.

 

Sandor was aware that Stranger wouldn’t leave, as he sat slumped against the base of  a tree, waiting on either death or wolves to devour him. He hoped the stallion would understand, once he stopped breathing, that it was all right to go on without him. The horse was loyal to a fault, stubborn and had more lives than a sack full of cats; a four legged version of the man it bore into battle time and time again.

 

Once the monk had shown up, Sandor was so far gone in pain and fever that he wasn’t aware he had ever owned a horse. His anguish was a palpable embrace around him. It tasted of copper and warm bile in his mouth, while he cried and begged for mercy from the shadow that hovered above him. The shadow replied that it no longer killed and Sandor continued to weep in misery, as he was offered water and nothing more.

 

Then there was nothing; a true absence of anything. It was a place beyond sleep but not past the threshold of death. Neither the heavens nor hells seemed to have any want to claim him. Sandor’s world was a sweet, never-ending void. It would have been easy to stay there forever.

 

But then the snippets of conversations and single words came to him.

 

“Horse”

 

“. . .to the stables.”

 

“Bite”

 

“Terrible beast. . .”

 

“Black”

 

“. . .wild as the Seven Hells!”

 

“Geld”

 

It was the last bit that made Sandor reflexively thrust out an arm, searching and clinging to whatever he could find. There was fabric, course and _real_ , within his fist. Though he had been weakened, Sandor’s clenched fingers were anything but feeble. For the first time since the tree he _saw_. A bald man’s face was nose-to-nose with him.

 

“Touch the horse, I’ll gut every last cunt in the room,” Sandor growled, like the injured dog that he was, before losing consciousness once again.

 

From that point on, the deep, soothing void called to Sandor less and less. It was important to surface from its calming waves, he told himself. Stranger was somehow with him and it was his duty, as master and soldier, to see to his horse.

 

He _couldn’t_ die. It simply could not be allowed. Something _needed_ him, like nothing and no one ever had.

 

He wanted to –Gods, did he ever wish it so- while he healed and learned to walk again. Sandor hated his lurch. He hated the silence. He hated the man that wouldn’t let well enough alone. But the first time he managed a crooked walk to the stables, and Stranger nibbled at the space that wasn’t an ear, Sandor sobbed like a babe into the horse’s mane, while the Elder Brother quietly exited the stall.

 

Now there was a reason to stretch out his leg every day as the Elder Brother instructed. It hurt every bloody time, but there was a goal. If he stretched out the tightly knotted flesh of his leg, he could walk to Stranger each day without the limb seizing up on him. Though Sandor remained silent, due more to his own inner demons rather than an acquiesce to the monk’s way of life, with Stranger, he could whisper into the horse’s large ear all the things he could not yet say to any man.

 

He was lost; completely bewildered for the first time in his life. And, as far as Sandor was concerned, only Stranger knew his secret. Sandor was made to look inward when he’d only ever known how to project outward. It was terrifying. It was shaming. It would have been lonely as well, if not for the horse.

 

The first few days were humbling. A quick grooming, nothing more than a gentle brushing and a washing of Stranger’s silky hide with wetted hands, left Sandor exhausted and having to lean on the Elder Brother to make it back to his pallet. But every day he could do a little more. The first time he lifted his saddle onto Stranger’s back, Sandor’s leg collapsed beneath him and he tore half the stable apart in his fit of rage after.  Sinking down onto the straw, Sandor held his head within his hands, his breathing shaky as he tried to keep the useless tears, that seemed so easy to come by nowadays, from spilling over. Stranger came closer and snorted until he looked up. When he did, the horse deliberately kicked over one of the few remaining upright buckets and Sandor suddenly felt something inside him shift. A smile turned into hesitant laughter, which quickly leapt straight into uncontrollable guffaws. Stranger whinnied happily and kicked another bucket, while Sandor wiped the mix of frustrated and joyous wetness from his face.

 

Their first ride together on the Isle was breathtaking. Stranger was a war horse, and good on a hunt. That had been his purpose before, but on the Isle there were no wars and fishing had replaced hunting. Sandor had never known he _wanted_ to ride for the sake of pleasurable time alone, until the Isle. Before, at the Red Keep, the idea seemed frivolous and stupid; a past-time for puffed up Lords and Ladies. But when a meadow opened before them, and Sandor urged Stranger into a gallop, the world had flown by, and Sandor felt _free_.

 

If Stranger could do this now, what was he capable of? If the horse could change, adapt and find some semblance of happiness, was there something waiting for him as well?  Sandor spent his days digging, as he was asked, in exchange for room and board. He tried hard to _listen_ to what the Elder Brother kept nattering on about, but the idea of souls and goodness and higher purposes only made sense on the back of Stranger. The hours spent riding did more for Sandor than any prayers or sermons.

 

Sandor wasn’t certain where he was going in life, but the path no longer seemed dangerous. Whether it was adventure or a silent life of reflection and fishing, a call to war once more or several acres of farm, with a woman who could look him in the eye and a son or two; wherever he went, the horse would go, and together, they would endure.

 

 


End file.
